As the business world evolves, new demands must be met to keep up with the ever-changing landscape.
When revenue responsibilities were transferred from the CEO to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), a need arose for a support role. That role has become revenue operations or RevOps officer.
In short, DevOps supports CRO. A CRO’s central role is to oversee organizational functions that impact revenue, such as sales, marketing, operations, and customer service. However, while the CRO focuses on revenue targets with a “big picture,” RevOps delves into the finer details and identifies what needs to be done operationally to meet a CRO’s expectations.
DevOps ensures that the goals set by the CRO are met by driving accountability of these revenue-generating departments.
Although CROs have been around for over a decade, they and RevOps have only recently gained popularity and captured the interest of industry leaders. Part of this is due to the advent of the digital age.
Before that, sales and marketing worked under one flag. However, as companies invested more in digital tools, they divided sales and marketing. Marketing became more intensely focused on delivering leads, and sales focused on conversions. The gap between sales and marketing created by the digital age meant little communication or alignment between the two departments.
In addition, the technical stacks varied from department to department, turning that gap into a chasm. Different departments having their tools also means they have their data, affecting how messages are delivered.
An offshoot of this is that work cultures become contaminated and toxic, with everyone pointing the finger at each other as to why none of their hard work is paying off.
While this creates major internal problems for organizations, the real victim is the customer.
Fortunately, the ultimate end goal of DevOps is to put customers first again.
DevOps takes the customer journey from start to finish. This means looking at how the customer experiences the brand first, at sales, then at account management, and even at offboarding (if necessary). Their goal is to make the customer feel valued throughout the journey, to the point where they want to return to the service offering, even when not on board.
It is important to understand that this journey is not something that RevOps creates based on instinct. Instead, a RevOps Officer will carefully plan each stage of the customer lifecycle based on data. For RevOps to have accurate quality data from sales, marketing, operations, and customer service, these departments must be unified.
Aligning teams within companies has a huge flow-on effect that benefits every other part of the company. Customer acquisition and retention will improve, and organizations will save money on tech stacks and see an improvement in their work culture and communication.
As businesses worldwide begin to see the importance of DevOps, many are struggling to fill the position. This comes down to the novelty of the role and the unique qualities required of a RevOps Officer to succeed. This person should be a balanced combination of analytical and creative solution orientation, using the left and right hemispheres at full capacity.
Despite the rarity of an effective RevOps Officer, they do exist. The best and easiest solution for businesses is outsourcing DevOps to organizations that include it in their service.
